


The Butterfly and the Hurricane on the Other Side of the World

by DarkDanc3r



Series: Driving Crazy [1]
Category: The Fast and the Furious (2001), Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Baby's First Transformers Fic, Crossover, Gen, POV Multiple, Reposted from LiveJournal, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-07 19:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20822852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkDanc3r/pseuds/DarkDanc3r
Summary: Electrocuted and confused meets demoted and pissed. It's a match made in… Mission City?





	The Butterfly and the Hurricane on the Other Side of the World

**Author's Note:**

> Line Break = Time Skip  
~~ = POV Change
> 
> Also, I apologize for my complete **lack** of knowledge of how the inside of a police department works. If I got something wrong, please feel free to explain it to me. Knowledge is always welcome.

Barricade fought to protect his spark, not his head. Most Cybertronians did. Processors could be rebuilt, backups reloaded, but once a spark was extinguished a mech was gone to the Well for good. That was the reason for so much heavy chest and back armor on all but the lightest skirmishers and scouts, and why Barricade was still fighting even with half his face slagged. He didn't need two functioning optics to track and kill his enemies, especially not a scout like the Autobot Bumblebee.

It actually confused the front-liner that the scout was taking only what amounted to pot shots at his chest, all the while attacking Barricade's head with energy and bladed weapons. In a move that the yellow Autobot had surely acquired while on Earth – no self-respecting Cybertronian warrior (not even an Autobot one) would willingly drop to the ground – Bumblebee took Barricade's legs out from under him with a swipe of his own leg, and Barricade fell back into a tangle of power lines and transformers.

With an explosion of sparks and a ripple of energy that tore through his frame like the best overload of his long life, Barricade crashed into oblivion and knew no more.

* * *

Prowl woke slowly; strange, for a mech constantly alert for threats to his Prime and fellow Autobots. Damage reports flooded his processors from all systems: armor, 10%; communications, 2%; power 20% and dropping; the list went on and with what processing power he could manage he wondered when he'd stepped between The Twins and Megatron.

Random electron spikes tingled against the shredded remains of his armor, and when he struggled to sit up a cable crackled and sparked inside his cranium case, sending him offline again. 

According to his chronometer it had only been microunits since he'd offlined, but he couldn’t trust that – not with the size of the gap between this most recent timestamp and the last one he could clearly remember.

With a hiss/shriek of damaged hydraulics he lifted his arm to remove the power cable from his cranium, and froze. Claws. He had claws, where he distinctly remembered the delicate, slim fingers he'd had before. When his elbow joint whined at the strain of holding that one position, he resumed his mission to free himself from the downed power lines. He offlined twice more – mere blinks of unconsciousness – before he could safely roll free of the tangled mess of what appeared to be a small-scale power supply station. His armor creaked and groaned as he rolled over and struggled to his feet, but it mostly seemed to still be intact. Amazingly undamaged around his spark chamber, even.

Unsteady on his feet for the first time since he'd been sparked, Prowl heard unfamiliar sirens and realized that if he had an alt-form he needed to transform into it immediately. Power flagging as badly as it was, he grabbed one of the still-live cables and shoved it into an emergency port. He violently shut off his vocalizer to kill the shriek that came from pouring that much raw, unfiltered energy into his system. It wasn't energon, or medical-grade power by any stretch, but it was agony to his already-sensitive circuits.

Draining power from the system as hard as he could pull it, Prowl forced himself to transform, almost grateful that enough damage had been done to make his pain centers finally shut themselves down. He disliked not knowing down to the smallest detail just how damaged he was, but he couldn't afford the pain-induced offlining either. Not with those sirens drawing closer with every nanoclick. 

Without even pausing to assess his alt-form, he rolled out of the fenced-in area, limping along on only two good wheels. He flicked his headlamps on easily enough – they took less power than running full scanners (what scanners remained, at any rate). It certainly helped him blend in with the other vehicles on the road, at any rate. None of the shapes were at all familiar, though the ones that flashed by with sirens and lights blaring were, at least, aesthetically appealing.

He followed the road he was on until he was too drained to stay on the road – a shorter distance than he would've preferred. He pulled into what appeared to be some sort of storage or recharge center. Surrounded by other mechanical things – though they did not seem to have any spark that he could sense – Prowl slipped into a recharge so deep it bordered on stasis.

* * *

The battle for Mission City was brutal and caused billions of dollars in property damage. In the months that followed, streets were cleaned up, buildings were assessed for damage, and property was reclaimed. When the Mission City Police Department checked the basement of one condemned building, they discovered a private long-term parking lot. Included in the collection of vehicles was a Saleen Mustang that had been painted in a mockery of a police interceptor. When no owner could be located, the police department took control of the vehicle and sent it to one of their mechanics after the officer who checked it out reported that it was equipped with state-of-the-art law enforcement equipment – right down to the build-in laptop docking station.

The newest Mission City Police Interceptor was turned over to the mechanics for a full overhaul. The mechanics found miraculously little wrong with the vehicle beyond the need for a new tank of gas and an oil change, and they sent it off to the detailers for a new paint job. At the detailers, the vehicle was given a solid black coat of paint and a thorough scrubbing from bumper to bumper.

The infusion of fuel, even something so unrefined as terran gasoline, gave Prowl's self-repair systems more to work with. There wasn't much that could be done about the damage to some of his more sensitive components, but armor was repaired from the inside out, his optics regained some of their function, and other internal components regained stability. Nobody at the motor pool could explain the speed at which the interceptor's gas tank emptied, but beyond that glitch most of them agreed that the vehicle was in excellent condition and ready to hit the streets. With a sense of accomplishment for a job well done, the head mechanic turned the keys over to the police chief.

~~

Brian O'Connor stared at the shield that guarded the glass door of Mission City's Police Headquarters. He'd requested a transfer out of L.A., and this was where they'd dumped him. Some small (compared to L.A., everything was small) city with rumors of a government experiment gone wrong.

It was just one more insult added to the list of things that had been piled on him after the Toretto thing. He'd been demoted to beat cop. Had his wages garnished to 'pay for the damages his recklessness had caused’. Been put on the most insulting, dirty, demeaning beat the city had. When he'd overheard another officer making a crack about 'having O'Connor fill the next open crossing guard position’, he'd applied for that transfer.

The only reason his request had been granted – as he'd been told repeatedly – was because Mission City was desperate for trained officers after they'd lost so many either to death in the chaos or sudden transfers immediately afterwards. And he ought to be damned glad that they'd been willing to take him. Nobody else was going to even consider it.

Steeling himself against the nasty looks and the dirty comments he knew were coming, he pulled open the door and entered his new home away from L.A..

* * *

Well over an hour after he'd entered the Chief's office, Brian emerged feeling like he'd just tried to win a 10 second race in a station wagon. He'd been told from the start to watch his ass or he'd end up back on that beat in L.A. so fast he'd break the sound barrier. The Chief didn't want him, but they were too short-staffed for a babysitter to be assigned to him. He had the next two days to familiarize himself with the city before he was assigned a vehicle and a beat, and he'd damned well better keep his nose clean. No racing, no gambling, no drinking; if he so much as sneezed funny the Chief would know.

Either the Chief was a god, or he was full of hot air, and by the end of the lecture Brian didn't care as long as he got out of that office. Ignoring the quiet snickers and underhanded comments from the officers close enough to see his expression, Bri made himself walk to the door with as stiff and steady a spine as he could manage.

This place was going to be hell. He just knew it.

* * *

His two days had been spent trying to settle into his new living space and learning his way around. The city really had been worked over; even after months of work that was still obvious. There were gouges in the streets, holes the size of semis in skyscrapers well above where any vehicle ought to belong… it made Brian wonder what the real story was behind all that damage.

He entered the department headquarters and sighed at the angry looks and mutterings from the officers in the building. Using all that experience he'd picked up from dealing with his own former friends, he walked back to the locker room and changed into his new uniform. They might hate his guts, but at least they weren't willing to sacrifice their image, and his uniform looked as pressed as any new uniform could.

Badge and pins in their places, bullet-proof vest – and god did he **not** miss wearing those – under his uniform, as pressed and put together as he could manage, Brian steeled himself for his first day in the new department. He found the person with the least-nasty scowl aimed at him and quietly convinced him to give him a heads up on how things were done at this station – he'd learned from day one just out of the academy that different places did things differently.

"Hey, soft-touch! Get away from the rookie before you rub off on him."

Bri winced at the nick-name, but figured it could've been worse. Not by much – soft-touch was used for cops who let criminals roll right over them.

At least it was accurate.

Brian sighed and turned to the officer who'd yelled. Just his luck, it was the man he needed to talk to. Before he could ask what he had to do, the man jerked his thumb towards the door to the motor pool.

"You're not getting paid to lollygag, soft-touch. Tell Hensley – Sgt. Hensley to you – that I want you in 643."

Brian just nodded and turned to head for the motor pool, practically able to feel the Lieutenant's glare burning a hole between his shoulder blades. The scent of a well-maintained garage hit Brian in the face when he opened the door and he felt a moment of nostalgia that he pushed aside before looking for Sgt. Hensley. He finally found the sergeant – a tiny woman with an expression to rival Letty's in one of her worst moods – and waited for her to finish what she was doing.

"Sgt. Hensley, the Lieutenant says for you to put me in 643."

She raised an eyebrow at him, and he wondered if he should've called her 'sir,' and then wondered what he was in for when she smirked.

"643? Sure, soft-touch." She turned and pulled a set of keys from the box at her right hand, and tossed them at him. "Don't race in my cars, soft-touch."

Brian **didn't** sigh, and went out to find the car. He rubbed his thumb over the Ford symbol on the key, and hunted through the lot for the numbers. None of the Crown Vics had 600 numbers, and he was starting to wonder if he'd been given a scooter or something when he spotted a black form at the back of the lot, where it was sitting in full sun. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he walked over and checked the tags.

There it was. 643. A damned Mustang. Late model, solid black paint job, practically in mint condition from the looks of it. What the hell were they doing giving **him** a car like that?

"This has _got_ to be a joke."


End file.
